Please note: we have been online over ten years, and we want The Trek BBS to continue as a free site. But if you block our ads we are at risk.Please consider unblocking ads for this site - every ad you view counts and helps us pay for the bandwidth that you are using. Thank you for your understanding.

Welcome! The Trek BBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans. Please login to see our full range of forums as well as the ability to send and receive private messages, track your favourite topics and of course join in the discussions.

If you are a new visitor, join us for free. If you are an existing member please login below. Note: for members who joined under our old messageboard system, please login with your display name not your login name.

No more party lines (with the neighbor who might or might not be eavesdropping on your call.) And no more necessity for going through a long distance operator to place a call to grandma, who lives 2000 miles away in Ohio -- most people don't remember that there was a time when you couldn't just pick up the phone and call anywhere yourself.

Tora Ziyal wrote:

No more Belgian Congo, no more... never mind, won't try to catalog all the changes in the names and boundaries of nations, especially in Eastern Europe and Africa.

I remember the Belgian Congo still being on the world maps and globes in the classrooms, even though it had officially ceased to exist a few years before.

I also remember when we were still going to the moon (but wouldn't be there for a few years yet (and all the other places we were going to go, besides - somehow, those other trips never quite got taken.)

__________________One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie
is that a cat has only nine lives. — Mark Twain

If you say "it's a matter of semantics," you are claiming that BC/AD and BCE/CE are just different terms that mean the same things.

They aren't. BC and AD have religious meanings that BCE and CE do not, as I clearly indicated.

But her point is that they're still using Jesus' birth as the dividing line, regardless of the terminology used. If someone asked, "When did the Common Era begin?" the answer is still, "It started when Jesus was born."

Unless something else happened that year worth noting, it's still about Jesus.

I understand that. And as I said before, I don't have a problem with that: the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was an event of world-historical significance.

The problem, as I also said before, is that the terms "BC" and AD" are freighted with religious significance, rather than merely historical significance

People who don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was Jesus Christ--that is to say, Jesus the Messiah--have objected to having to date things from "Before Christ".

Similarly, people who don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth is "the Lord" object to having to date things in "the year of the Lord."

Using either expression is tantamount to confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

To understand how objectionable that might be to some people, I ask others to consider how they might feel if they were expected to use the dating system adopted by the Church of Satan, in which this is the Year XLIV AS--that is to say, the forty-fourth year of Satan.

Or, consider my earlier suggestion to make the year 1543 the year zero. How would Christians on this board feel if they were expected, not only to use this year as an epoch, but to use the expressions "Religious Darkness (RD)" for years before zero, and "Scientific Enlightenment (SE)" for years afterward?

They wouldn't like that very much at all, I'd wager. And yet here we have people saying it's no big deal when others have to do something like that, and even saying that it's "silly" to object. In my opinion, that's a selfish and complacent position.

And while we're on the subject of "what has changed since you were in school"--CE and BCE are not new. Historians were already using them when I started university.

__________________
An illusion--with intelligence! A malignant vision, with a will of pure evil!

If you say "it's a matter of semantics," you are claiming that BC/AD and BCE/CE are just different terms that mean the same things.

They aren't. BC and AD have religious meanings that BCE and CE do not, as I clearly indicated.

But her point is that they're still using Jesus' birth as the dividing line, regardless of the terminology used. If someone asked, "When did the Common Era begin?" the answer is still, "It started when Jesus was born."

Unless something else happened that year worth noting, it's still about Jesus.

I understand that. And as I said before, I don't have a problem with that: the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was an event of world-historical significance.

The problem, as I also said before, is that the terms "BC" and AD" are freighted with religious significance, rather than merely historical significance

People who don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was Jesus Christ--that is to say, Jesus the Messiah--have objected to having to date things from "Before Christ".

Similarly, people who don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth is "the Lord" object to having to date things in "the year of the Lord."

Using either expression is tantamount to confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

To understand how objectionable that might be to some people, I ask others to consider how they might feel if they were expected to use the dating system adopted by the Church of Satan, in which this is the Year XLIV AS--that is to say, the forty-fourth year of Satan.

Or, consider my earlier suggestion to make the year 1543 the year zero. How would Christians on this board feel if they were expected, not only to use this year as an epoch, but to use the expressions "Religious Darkness (RD)" for years before zero, and "Scientific Enlightenment (SE)" for years afterward?

They wouldn't like that very much at all, I'd wager. And yet here we have people saying it's no big deal when others have to do something like that, and even saying that it's "silly" to object. In my opinion, that's a selfish and complacent position.

Yet it uses the supposed birth year of Jesus as the dividing line... You are not really debunking TSQ's posts about this issue.

I remember the two library field trips: one to learn the Dewey Decimal system, and one to learn the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. Now my kid just Googles everything and watches historical documentary posted in pieces on You Tube.

When I was first entering high school, Microsoft had just released Encarta Encyclopedia on CD the previous year. We were all fascinated (well... those of us who enjoyed knowledge), and knew that THIS was the way of the future, the way it would be from that time onward. Little did we know a scant 5 years later, that method would start to become obsolete.

If you say "it's a matter of semantics," you are claiming that BC/AD and BCE/CE are just different terms that mean the same things.

They aren't. BC and AD have religious meanings that BCE and CE do not, as I clearly indicated.

But her point is that they're still using Jesus' birth as the dividing line, regardless of the terminology used. If someone asked, "When did the Common Era begin?" the answer is still, "It started when Jesus was born."

Actually it started five years after he was born thanks to a little calculating error a monk in the 6th century made.

__________________
The Obsidian Order: Proudly watching you since the 19th century. And looking manly in our purple hats while doing that.

A lot of things have changed - Burma is Myanmar, Kalkutta is Kolkata, Bombay is Mumbay . . .

I've always spelled it Calcutta. And when did Bombay change its name? That's news to me.

I do remember when Peking became Beijing, and the romanization of Chinese names changed so that Mao Tse-Tung became Mao Zedong.

When I graduated from high school, China was still called Red China, wasn't a member of the U.N., and wasn't diplomatically recognized by the United States. Official U.S. policy was that the Nationalists on Taiwan (which many still called Formosa) were the legitimate government of China, even though the Communists had controlled the mainland for 25 years. Talk about denial!

Official U.S. policy was that the Nationalists on Taiwan (which many still called Formosa) were the legitimate government of China, even though the Communists had controlled the mainland for 25 years. Talk about denial!

I still consider the United States to be a rogue province of the British Empire.

But her point is that they're still using Jesus' birth as the dividing line, regardless of the terminology used. If someone asked, "When did the Common Era begin?" the answer is still, "It started when Jesus was born."

Unless something else happened that year worth noting, it's still about Jesus.

I understand that. And as I said before, I don't have a problem with that: the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was an event of world-historical significance.

The problem, as I also said before, is that the terms "BC" and AD" are freighted with religious significance, rather than merely historical significance

People who don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was Jesus Christ--that is to say, Jesus the Messiah--have objected to having to date things from "Before Christ".

Similarly, people who don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth is "the Lord" object to having to date things in "the year of the Lord."

Using either expression is tantamount to confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

To understand how objectionable that might be to some people, I ask others to consider how they might feel if they were expected to use the dating system adopted by the Church of Satan, in which this is the Year XLIV AS--that is to say, the forty-fourth year of Satan.

Or, consider my earlier suggestion to make the year 1543 the year zero. How would Christians on this board feel if they were expected, not only to use this year as an epoch, but to use the expressions "Religious Darkness (RD)" for years before zero, and "Scientific Enlightenment (SE)" for years afterward?

They wouldn't like that very much at all, I'd wager. And yet here we have people saying it's no big deal when others have to do something like that, and even saying that it's "silly" to object. In my opinion, that's a selfish and complacent position.

Yet it uses the supposed birth year of Jesus as the dividing line... You are not really debunking TSQ's posts about this issue.

Exactly. It's debatable whether Jesus really even existed. It's far more likely that he is a conglomeration of different older gods and legends, after all. Jesus isn't as sound a historical figure as many think. You're trying to separate the religion from the "man," which simply cannot be done. The story of Jesus affected society through religion, and by no other means. That is why it is a matter of semantics.